Is Team Loyalty a Virtue?
I presented a paper in applied ethics at the Sport and Society Conference cosponsored by St. Norbert College and the Green Bay Packers, probably the first collaboration between a professional sports team and a college or university. There were a variety of interesting talks, roundtables, and presentations.
I’m providing a link to my paper which asks the question “Is Team Loyalty a Virtue?”[PDF]. My goal was to ascertain whether the loyalty of a sports fan to a particular team is justifiable. The paper is still (in my estimation) only about half worked-out. Surprisingly little has been written on the subject, so a lot of what I was trying to do was just lay some groundwork. The paper, as it is now, is really a suggestion for what it would take to show that the loyalty of a fan to a team is virtuous.
Anyways, enjoy, and feel free to leave comments below.
Are faithfulness and loyalty tautologous? If so, does this help in the conversation (i.e. has more been done in the area of studying faithfulness as a virtue)? If not, what makes the difference between faithfulness and loyalty?
It seems that the quaantity (quality?) of virute is based on two variables: how much loyalty the individual has for the object of loyalty, and how deserving the object is of receiving loyalty. However, if this is true, then the two variables would be inversely proportional. It would, therefore, be possible for someone who is 80% loyal to an object that is 20% worthy of loyalty to have the same amount (quality?) of virtue as someone who is 20% loyal to an object that is 80% worthy of loyalty.
Tom
16 Jun 10 at 2:30 pm